Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 185 133 Completely deviated from the original intention

After more than a week of wandering around London without doing business, Chen Muwu finally returned to the David Faraday Laboratory of the Royal Research Institute.

Old Bragg, the director of the laboratory, still maintained the enthusiasm he had when he and Chen Muwu first met.

Old Prague not only personally led Chen Muwu to the laboratory, but also solemnly told him that if there is any need, feel free to ask, as long as it can be solved, Old Prague can help him solve it.

From Old Prague, Chen Muwu could see that he had to do everything himself.

But at the same time, Chen Muwu felt a little strange:
In Cavendish's laboratory, Rutherford, who almost regarded Chen Muwu as his own son, never greeted him so well.

How come to the David Faraday Laboratory, the old Prague makes him feel more like a spring breeze than his own teacher?
The first thing to do when entering the laboratory is of course to check the experimental equipment here.

Although the predecessors Dewar's achievements in low-temperature physics can basically be equal to Onnes of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

However, the British research on low-temperature physics did not produce an industry-university-research alliance like Leiden University. In the field of low-temperature physics, there were only Dewar and a few of his students.

Chen Muwu thought that even though David Faraday's laboratory had a foundation for studying low-temperature physics, he still couldn't escape the need to buy some equipment and reagents from Leiden University.

But as soon as he checked the experimental equipment, Chen Muwu was dumbfounded.

It's not that the equipment in the lab is unusable, but compared with what he saw in the lab at Leiden University at the end of last year, it's really an underground and a heaven.

After asking the relevant personnel, Chen Muwu finally understood why the equipment here was a bit old.

One is that Dewar, unlike Onnes, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in low-temperature physics, and he is not the only famous British physicist.

Therefore, the British government did not allocate too much money to the David Faraday Laboratory where Dewar was located. From the beginning to the end, Dewar has been suffering in this laboratory.

The second is that since the start of the First World War, due to the increase in military expenditures, the funds available for laboratories have been even less.

In addition, there were not many students under Dewar, who were recruited by the British army like Moseley and sent to the front line, and many of them died in the European battlefield.

Under such a situation of insufficient financial resources and manpower, Dewar could only change course in the twilight years of his academic career, bid farewell to the costly low-temperature physics research, and instead studied the surface tension of soap bubbles.

After the war, David Faraday Laboratory was basically in a state of existence in name only.

Old Prague took over the position of director after the former director of the laboratory, Sir Dewar, passed away. He accepted the order somewhat in danger, basically because he wanted him to rebuild the laboratory that his ancestors once had.

A year ago, when Chen Muwu and Old Prague met for the first time at last year's Solvay Conference, he had not yet participated in the Cambridge-Oxford Joint Games, hadn't won an Olympic gold medal, and hadn't met the Duke of York.

At that time, the old Prague said that he would nominate Chen Muwu for the Nobel Prize, which should be because he really liked him.

But a year later, Chen Muwu won the gold medal, won the Nobel Prize, invented quantum mechanics, pointed out Einstein's mistakes, and became the smartest person in the world in the media.

Although his status has improved a lot compared to before.

But Chen Muwu felt that this should not be enough for Old Prague to be so courteous to him.

After thinking about it for a long time, he couldn't find the reason.

Seeing the situation in David Faraday's laboratory now, Chen Muwu finally wanted to understand why Old Prague was so enthusiastic about him.

It is probably his teacher Rutherford who bragged to his senior who also lived in Oceania in the southern hemisphere.

After all, he had a great student under his command, and he had a relationship with the royal family, which directly doubled the laboratory's annual funding.

It's not cool to be cool yourself, but to show it off to others inadvertently, let them compliment you on the surface, and envy you in your heart, that's really cool.

Old Prague probably also hoped that he would also get a sum of money for the David Faraday Laboratory like he did for the Cavendish Laboratory before?

Chen Muwu's idea was basically confirmed after he asked Old Prague to buy some new experimental equipment.

As soon as he heard that it was going to cost money, he saw a long-lost wry smile on Old Prague's face.

The last time I saw this expression was the fall of the year before last when Chen Muwu proposed to Rutherford that he wanted to buy a vacuum pump that cost eight thousand dollars.

Since the British royal family transferred funds to the account of the Cavendish Laboratory, Rutherford has never smiled bitterly again, and even his height is a few centimeters taller than before.

"Dr. Chen, can't these experimental equipment left by Sir Dewar be used?"

Looking at the old Prague who was pretending to be stupid, Chen Muwu really didn't want to answer his question.

If it can be used, will I still ask you for money to buy equipment?
Before crossing over, when he was doing general physics experiments at the university, he got a resistance box.

On the nameplate of the antique resistance box, various Cyrillic letters that he could not understand were engraved.

Chen Muwu only knew the two sets of letters above, one was CCCP and the other was 1955.

The resistance box produced by Sulian has no problems in use after more than 50 years, and it is completely sufficient for experiments with low precision such as ordinary physics experiments.

However, refrigeration and heat preservation equipment produced at the end of the nineteenth century will not be usable after three to forty years.

"Sir Prague, these equipments are quite old. I have checked them carefully. Many of them are even older than me. There is really no way to use them."

Seeing that pretending to be a fool didn't work, the old Bragg complained to him again: "Dr. Chen, I also really want to help you buy the corresponding experimental equipment, but there is really no money in David Faraday's laboratory now.

"If you don't believe me, you can follow me to my laboratory to have a look. The X-ray source I'm doing crystal diffraction on is brought by myself from University College London."

In Chen Muwu's heart now, he is somewhat blaming his teacher Rutherford.

In order to save money, he rejected his request to conduct a low-temperature physics experiment in the Cavendish Laboratory, but introduced him to the David Faraday Laboratory.

If you want to do the experiment you planned before here, it seems that you have to pay for it yourself?

That's impossible!
Ma Sanli, an old man, once said, "Zeng Zi said: 'One sheep is also driven, and two sheep are also herded'".

Since the Duke of York had been spared blood once, then Chen Muwu didn't mind, let the second prince spare him again.

Cambridge University is the property of their old Windsor family, as is the David Faraday Laboratory at the Royal Institution.

And compared with the Cavendish Laboratory, the word "Royal" is hung in front of the latter!
The Royal Laboratory has no money, so isn't that just a slap in the face of their royal family!

Last summer, at the dinner at the British embassy in France, while paying the money, the Duke of York also promised Chen Muwu in front of the Crown Prince of Sweden that if he encountered any other problems at Cambridge University, he would give him money. The second prince wrote a letter.

But there is no reason to ask someone to ask for money empty-handed. It is better to get out the samples of plexiglass first, earn the money for building the school, and then give old Prague a favor.

Anyway, Chen Muwu also wanted to make this piece of plexiglass first.

Polymethyl methacrylate, as the name suggests, is to polymerize a large amount of methyl methacrylate together.

So getting the raw material methyl methacrylate is the key to making plexiglass.

Chen Muwu went to the market full of fighting spirit to inquire around, and even went to the laboratory of the University of London and the chemical plant in the suburbs, but there was no such thing at all.

At this point in time, not only is there no plexiglass, but even raw materials have not yet appeared.

It seems that now I can only follow the instructions, do it myself, and have enough food and clothing.

Chen Muwu burrowed into the Royal Society's reference room to check the information, planning to push up step by step to see what can be produced now.

This move of his made Old Prague very puzzled.

I have talked about this before, why does this Dr. Chen still not buy the equipment for his low-temperature physics experiment, or raise funds for the laboratory, but he still looks calm, and even looks like he is not in a hurry at all? Not going to experiment?
After meeting Chen Muwu in the laboratory one time, Old Bragg asked him his own questions in a circumstantial way.

"Dr. Chen, aren't you going to come to David Faraday Laboratory to do some experimental research on low-temperature physics? How are the recent experiments going?"

"Sir Prague, because the experimental equipment needs to be purchased from the Netherlands, and it will take a certain amount of time to raise such a large sum of money, so I temporarily changed the direction of my research and plan to do some simple chemical experiments to pass the time. .”

"Chemistry experiment? If I remember correctly, whether it's atoms or the theory of relativity, your research scope has never deviated from physics, right? Why are you still interested in chemistry, Dr. Chen?"

"Sir, I also recently got inspiration by accident in the laboratory. Every day I commute to get off work, I will see the two sages whose names are on the laboratory, Sir Humphrey Davy and Michael Faraday.

"Faraday was a great experimental physicist, but his teacher, Sir David, was a great chemist.

"It may be that Sir David gave me invisible guidance, which made me suddenly want to do some chemical experiments in this laboratory."

It may be the sequelae of the Ghost Club, which led to a "psychic exchange" between Chen Muwu and the great chemist David who died almost 100 years ago.

His rhetoric is flawless. Isn't it normal to do chemical experiments in a laboratory named after a chemist?

After this episode happened, Chen Muwu still repeated the previous process, every day at the Legation-Royal Society Reference Room at two o’clock and one line, and occasionally went to David Faraday’s laboratory to do some work.

It can be considered that the hard work paid off, and he finally found a way to prepare methacrylic acid from acrylic acid from an organic chemistry literature published in 1865.

So the most basic material he can buy now is methacrylic acid.

Let methacrylic acid and methanol undergo an esterification reaction to obtain methyl methacrylate, the monomer of a polymer such as plexiglass.

But Chen Muwu did not follow the routine. He planned to start with the preparation of methacrylic acid.

Its purpose is to cover up people's eyes and ears, so as not to let others know what kinds of materials plexiglass is made of.

If you buy directly from a chemical factory, or customize methacrylic acid, which is not a common organic substance, it is easy for others to crack the raw material of plexiglass.

Even if several other reagents are purchased at the same time to release smoke bombs, it is only a matter of time before they are cracked.

However, starting with more basic raw materials is different. Chen Muwu can buy acetone, sodium hydroxide, hydrocyanic acid, concentrated sulfuric acid, and methanol, which are now very common.

Even if these materials are bought by other people in the David Faraday experiment, or they find the labels of the medicines in the trash can, it is still difficult for them to guess what Chen Muwu is going to do, and what is the synthesized thing? What.

The only one that is having trouble is hydrocyanic acid.

Unlike thallium, cyanide has long been known to be highly toxic.

Chen Muwu, a fellow of the Royal Society, was rejected when he wanted to buy a large amount of hydrocyanic acid for the first time.

He could only ask Old Prague to come forward, and the director of the laboratory guaranteed that he finally bought this experimental material.

The puzzled old Prague was even more curious. Is Chen Muwu going to do a chemical experiment, or is he trying to get rich and kill himself?

According to the steps of the paper decades ago, Chen Muwu first hydrogenated acetone and hydrocyanic acid in aqueous sodium hydroxide solution to produce the intermediate product acetone cyanohydrin.

Then let acetone cyanohydrin and concentrated sulfuric acid carry out amidation reaction to generate sulfate of methacrylamide.

After amide salt hydrolysis, methacrylic acid can be obtained, and methacrylic acid can be esterified by adding methanol to obtain the final monomer, methyl methacrylate.

It is a colorless, transparent liquid with a pungent garlic-like pungent odor.

The steps of chemically preparing monomers have been completely completed by now.

There was only one thing left in front of Chen Muwu.

It is how to polymerize these volatile monomers to produce the world's first plexiglass.

Fortunately, the polymerization method of methyl methacrylate is relatively simple. In the bulk polymerization, initiators and catalysts can be used to accelerate the polymerization reaction, or nothing can be added to make miracles.

Chen Muwu chose the latter method. He found two flat molds, and let the methyl methacrylate be sandwiched between them to be evenly heated.

Starting from the preparation of raw materials, after experiencing countless failures and starting all over again, after nearly three months, Chen Muwu finally produced the world's first organic compound in David Faraday's laboratory. Glass stuff.

He admired the fruits of his labor like a work of art, but he completely forgot his original intention of fleeing Cambridge and coming to London under the banner of studying low-temperature physics.

He was just trying to avoid Einstein's entanglement!

(End of this chapter)